Greybeard, I read your post on the old forum about over sized hinge pins and decided not to put my two cents in until I did a little testing of my own. After experimenting on 4 different guns, both Encore and Contender, I came to the same conclusion you did. Tightening the hinge pins caused my groups to open up slightly. Not very much, but a measurabe amount. I have a theory as to why this is. Any thing that is manufactued can not be built exactly straight,square,perpendicular,round,or any thing else. there has to be tolerance. No frame/barrel lug holes can be bored exacly on the same axis, and no barrel lug can be bored exactly square to the lug itself. There fore if you remove all play from the hinge holes and hold the barrel completly rigid to the frame, you have ever so slightly tilted the locking lugs to the frame recess. Puting the frame to barrel in a twisting bind. And we all know that anything in a bind is bad for accuracy. I believe the pin needs a certain amount of play to correct this and allow the lockup to be more complete. Now before everyone who believes in overszed pins attacks me, I do think that an OS pin will definitly help if there is too much play. But as a general rule I believe the pin should be able to be removed without any help, especially from a mallet. I may still catch a lot of flack from this but its just my theory. What do you think? KN